The ponderings of a shameless, leftist female scientist

About Crys

Though she was born in New York and raised in Rome, got her Uni degree in Dublin and her PhD in Padova and now works as a postdoctoral researcher in Germany, Crys has always refused to adopt the arsey title of "citizen of the world". Rather she is a shamelessly opinionated bilingual smart-mouthed scientist, who will discuss anything and everything from politics, feminism, and social justice to harry potter, traveling, food, books, and anything biology. Expect a blog filled with musings, argumentative topics she will be only too glad to keep hashing out in the comments section, and the occasional Italian word or expression thrown into the mix. So ciao belli! Welcome aboard!
If you want to send in topics for future blog posts, or videos of weird animals whose identity is unknown or behavior inexplicable to feature in This Week In Zoology, or if you have any specific questions, you can contact Crys at thoughtsofcrys(at)yahoo(dot)com

EVENTS

Pineapple Is The Fashion

I read somewhere that pineapples used to be insanely expensive in Britain, as they were a novelty item imported from the colonies in the New World. Not that people ate them, but that they used to carry one around under their arm at parties as a status symbol.

As hilariously ridiculous as that sounds, I came across this video that that puts a new spin on the use of pineapples as a modern fashion item.

Personally, I’m not ethically opposed to leather. If we’re killing cows for food, keeping and using their hides for clothing seems to me to be perfectly logical. However, any use of something that is normally thrown away and which generates additional income for those who need it is, in my opinion, great.

I’d rather have pineapple shoes than crocodile ones. Though, not the white and gold ones that show up on the video screenshot, please. I don’t think those are for anyone over the age of 10. The others in the video seemed nice enough!

I agree with that. All I was saying about not being ethically opposed to leather right now is that I don’t think it’s the same as chinchilla fur coats or crocodile boots, ethically speaking. As right now we do keep cows, and we do slaughter them for meat, I don’t think that using their hides for clothing is the moral equivalent of killing endangered species, or using dozens of animals for a single coat and keeping them for no other purpose than their hides. Rather, using cow hides for leather seems to me as not being wasteful. That being said of course things might change, we might drastically reduce the numbers of cows we keep, and this alternative is also not being wasteful.